The several plots and holdings do not lie in compact patches, but are formed of strips intermixed with each other. The so-called open-field system has been treated so exhaustively and with such admirable clearness by Seebohm, that I need not detain my readers in order to discuss it at length. I shall merely take from the Eynsham Cartulary the general description of the arable of Shifford, Oxon. It consists of several furlongs or areas, more or less rectangular in shape; each furlong divided into a certain number of strips (_seliones_), mostly half an acre or a rood (quarter acre) in width; some of these strips get shortened, however (_seliones curtae_), or sharpened (_gorae_), according to the shape of the country. At right angles with the strips in the fields lie the 'headlands' (_capitales_), which admit to other strips when there is no special road for the purpose[466]. When the area under tillage abuts against some obstacles, as against a highway, a river, a neighbouring furlong, the strips are stunted (_buttae_). Every strip is separated from the next by _balks_ on even ground, and _linches_ on the steep slopes of a hill. The holding of a peasant, free or villain, has been appropriately likened to a bundle of these strips of different shapes, the component parts of which lie intermixed with the elements of other holdings in the different fields of the township. There is e.g. in the Alvingham Cartulary a deed by which John Aysterby grants to the Priory of Alvingham in Lincolnshire his villain Robert and half a bovate of land[467]. The half-bovate is found to consist of twelve strips west of Alvingham and sixteen strips east of the village; the several plots lie among similar plots owned by the priory and by other peasants. The demesne land of the priory is also situated not in compact areas, but in strips intermixed with those of the tenantry, in the 'communal fields' according to the phraseology of our documents.